Accident

An accident is a specific, unpredictable, unusual and unintended external action which occurs in a particular time and place, with no apparent and deliberate cause but with marked effects. It implies a generally negative outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its occurrence. However, an unexpected boon may also be referred to as a "happy accident".

Quotes

• ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• Chapter of accidents.
  • Edmund Burke, Notes for Speeches (Edition 1852), Volume II, p. 426.

• Great discoveries are made accidentally less often than the populace likes to think.
  • William Cecil Dampier (commenting on how an accident led to the discovery of X-rays), A History of Science and Its Relations with Philosophy and Religion (1931), 882.

• Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.
  • Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1849-1850), Chapter XXVIII; Pickwick Papers (1836), Chapter II; Walter Scott, Peveril of the Peak, Last Chapter; V. S. Lean, Collectanæ, Volume III, p. 411.

• To what happy accident is it that we owe so unexpected a visit?
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1768), Chapter XIX.

• Our wanton accidents take root, and grow
  To vaunt themselves God's laws.
  • Charles Kingsley, Saint's Tragedy (1848), Act II, scene 4.

• Nichts unter der Sonne ist Zufall—am wenigsten das wovon die Absicht so klar in die Augen leuchtet.
  • Nothing under the sun is accidental, least of all that of which the intention is so clearly evident.
  • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Emilia Galotti (1772), IV, 3.

• At first laying down, as a fact fundamental,
  That nothing with God can be accidental.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christus, The Golden Legend (1872), Part VI.

• By many a happy accident.
  • Thomas Middleton, No Wit, no Help, like a Woman's (1611), Act IV, scene 1.

• Was der Ameise Vernunft mühsam zu Haufen schleppt, jagt in einem Hui der Wind des Zufalls zusammen.
  • What the reason of the ant laboriously drags into a heap, the wind of accident will collect in one breath.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Fiesco; or, the Genoese Conspiracy (1783), Act II, scene 4.

• I have shot mine arrow o'er the house
  And hurt my brother.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act V, scene 2, line 254.

• Moving accidents by flood and field.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act I, scene 3, line 135.

• A happy accident.
  • Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, L'Allemagne (1813), Chapter XVI.

• The accident of an accident.
  • Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow, speech in reply to Lord Grafton; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 4.

• While this wasn’t the first accident involving a self-driving car, it was the first time the car was found to be at fault. Yes, the car was at fault.
  • Reza_Torkzadeh, Accidents Happen (2017), Chapter IX, p.1.

• The chapter of accidents is the longest chapter in the book.
  • Attributed to John Wilkes by Robert Southey, The Doctor (1837), Chapter CXVIII; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 4.

• History has a way of reducing individuals to flat, two-dimensional portraits. it is the enemy of subjectivity, which is why Stephen Dedalus called it "a nightmare from which I am trying to awake". If we think of Kierkegaard, of Nietzsche, of Hölderlin, we see them standing alone, outside of history. They are spotlighted by their intensity, and the background is all darkness. They intersect history, but are not a part of it. There is something anti-history about such men; they are not subject to time, accident and death, but their intensity is a protest against it. I have elsewhere called such men "Outsiders" because they attempt to stand outside history. which defines humanity on terms of limitation, not of possibility.
  • Colin Wilson in Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs, p. 13-14 (1964)